Bill in Senate to Expand Public Access to Taxpayer-funded Research

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the world’s largest source of funding for biomedical research. Taxpayers provide more than $28 billion annually for the NIH [1], yet only about a third of the research studies are made publicly available in various repositories after a 12-month delay [2]. Lawmakers are trying to change this and the U.S. Senate is currently deliberating a bill that would require all research funded by the NIH to be freely available to the public within 12 months of publication.The requirement builds upon an earlier voluntary NIH initiative to establish a web-based repository for barrier-free access to primary reports in the life sciences [3]. Unfortunately, since it’s implementation, the voluntary initiative has failed to attain a deposit rate greater than 5% by individual researchers [4]. Thus, advocates of open access to scientific research have been lobbying to make it a mandatory requirement.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the provision earlier this year as part of the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill [5]. The Senate Appropriations Committee followed and it is slated for full Senate consideration by the end of the month. The bill, S.1710, includes language requiring:

… that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

More information can be found at GovTrack.us. The Senate bill requires public access, not open access, meaning that while the research articles will be free of charge, they will still be under copyright.

Public access to research will help to accelerate scientific advancement and improve public health. As someone who advocates the public taking a greater interest in the evidence from scientific research studies to guide health and healthcare decisions, I strongly encourage you to contact your Senator and ask them to support the NIH Public Access Policy. You can use the cut-and-paste version of the American Library Association/Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ALA/ATA) text provided by DigitalKoans to send a message to your Senator right now. It only takes a minute.

According to Coturnix, the Online Community Manager at the Public Library of Science (PLoS), your message needs to be sent no later than Friday, September 28, 2007 as that’s when the bill is slated to appear before the Senate.